Volunteering at a Needle Exchange as a Reformed Addict

Condoms and other fun gifts at the needle exchange.

I regularly do volunteer work in the needle exchange located in Regina’s north central neighbourhood. If you’re not familiar with north central, it’s known for drugs, extreme violence, prostitution of girls all ages (even as young as 12), and unsupervised toddlers running around in dirty diapers with no shoes dodging the broken glass and astray needles laying on the ground—not to mention the token, creepy old dolls from some lost child lying in the street. It’s a scary neighbourhood, one of Canada’s worst and most notorious, if not the worst of them all.

This needle exchange in particular is the busiest in Saskatchewan. Some people are just grabbing a quick ten pack of rigs with whatever accessory they may need to go along with. Then there are others who have homes with heavy using/dealing, dropping off 3,600 needles at a time, and taking home eight boxes of clean rigs. They used to allow people to just take as many needles as they wanted, but then crime units discovered gangs were taking boxes upon boxes to do up ready-to-go injections of morphine and other drugs on the street waiting for old customers and new victims who were always curious, but not quite sure how to fix up a hit. Shooting pills is tricky and dangerous business, it’s much more difficult preparing a hit from a pill, than say, cooking down some smack. It’s full of buff and filler that’s just waiting to build in your brain vessels to give you a nice healthy stroke. Remember: always filter your drugs, kids! Anyway, thanks to this discovery, now you can only get what you return. This helps as a preventative measure in making sure people aren’t making up pre-loads.

Being an addict myself, I get along with everyone quite easily. I’m always friendly, but I have no problem throwing out a few “shut the fuck up”s to get people in line. Some junkies have a false sense of entitlement and act like I’m their servant. I will quickly correct them and tell them how it really is. It can’t be just smiles in a place like this. It takes some balls if you want to conduct yourself properly.

The exchange is also attached to a wonderful organization known as “AIDS Programs of South Saskatchewan” which does a tremendous amount of work in helping these people out. They have many HIV and Hep C infected clients, but if you are neither, you are still welcome to come sit down, warm up, and grab some toast, coffee, and pack of rigs to go with breakfast. The people who work here are really compassionate, and work their fingers to the bone trying to help. They understand the importance of programs like needle exchanges in an era where not enough people realize their worth. This is why I like to donate some of my time there.

I used to be on the other side of the table, and now that I’ve gotten my act together, I like to alleviate some of the stress and pressure for the people who are doing this every day of their lives. It would be nice to see more people supporting this cause, but again, it’s so commonly written off as a queer junkie disease that it’s sometimes neglected. That is why it is so important to me, because I am both of those, and in North America those are the two demographics that are most commonly inflicted with the virus.

Yeah… insulin.

Like the methadone clinic I am a patient at, there are people from everywhere.  Family members bump into each other quite often here, street workers, your occasional twinkie gay boy, steroid users, and many more. One of the hardest things seeing is pregnant women who are still using. I don’t judge them, because I know how fucking hard it is to stop, but some of them are so bent out of shape you just know that baby is going to be a whaling crack baby unable to cope and function with the fucked up life it’s been given. I remember an obviously pregnant woman stumbling in screaming “I’m pregnant!” Holy shit girl, no fucking kidding, what else can I get you besides rigs? We have a lot of things available, cookers, sterile water, cotton filters of various sizes, alcohol prep pads, tourniquets, basically everything you need to do an injection safely and properly, and you can have as much as whatever you want, except for the needles of course as previously described. There are also condoms, tampons, and other pretty little packets.

Slamming dope is a whole new ball game when it comes to the world of drugs, and there are several various reasons why people start. No matter how you got there though, you all end up going through the same bullshit. If you’re sticking a needle in your vein on your own volition, it’s fair to say you’ve got a serious problem. There is nothing quite like it. You can snort, eat, and drink all the drugs you want, but it doesn’t compare to slamming a fat hit of whatever your drug of choice may be. That may sound kind of nice to some of you, yes? Well it can be, but where it’s going to take you isn’t worth it. I don’t think I have ever heard of anyone who has injected drugs and gotten away unscathed, whether it’s physical or mental problems, it’s going to get the best of you.

Sometimes I miss the chaos, the madness, and the insanity of it all. The high strung lifestyle where life is so intense it’s almost like a movie, where you don’t know what’s around the next corner, but holy fucking shit is it ever crazy; and it can go on for years. I miss that, but working the needle exchange helps give me a little bit of a taste, and I taste cautiously. It also serves as a good reminder how disheveled and disgusting I became, and in a short period of time because you always, ALWAYS just pick up where you left off. Remember that!

It’s sad to see the constant disregard for the troubled—damaged souls in desperate need of help, and of love, being treated like the plague itself. It’s quite common for human beings to actually have ongoing hope that people are just going to die so they don’t have to see or “deal” with them. Those people fail to see the importance of life saving efforts such as needle exchanges; because they would rather have all the “worthless junkies” just get AIDS and Hep C, so they would just keel over already. Human beings raising themselves above others, creating their own sense of superiority, and being completely content with choosing to be ignorant to how people come to the situations that they are in.

Many people actually think addicts chose the hell that they live in; who the fuck would choose that? The notion is nothing short of asinine. It sickening, how one human can treat another human like they are the equivalent of the dog shit they accidently stepped in on the way to work.

More from Andrew Horn:

My Methadone Clinic Is the Happiest Place on Earth

The Metha-DOs and Metha-DON'ts of Shaking Your Addiction

A Homo's Qualm with Monster Cocks